Goodbye 14 , hello 15

On New Year's Eve we spent the afternoon wandering around Zurich before going to Guido's apartment, where we celebrated.

We had a brief look around the main shopping district before visiting the Swiss National Museum and then walking around two former working class inner suburbs, Kreis 4 and Kreis 5.  Guido lives in Kreis 4 and it still has the reputation for being Zurich's red light district. 

Zurich's vertiginous church steeples.

and trams.

 I

I loved the sight of these snow covered bikes.  I'm just glad that i didn't need to ride one.

Some unsanctioned, premature New Year's Eve fireworks

We had some wonderful food and plenty of wine at Guido's lovely apartment with Manuela and their friends Carmen and Reto.  

Immediately after celebrating at midnight we caught a couple of trams into central Zurich and walked down Bahnhofstrasse to get as close as possible to Lake Zurich, from where the city's new year fireworks were being launched.

The centre of Zurich, shortly after midnight

There was a great atmosphere.  There were a lot of people around but I didn't ever feel claustrophobic. We took along some gluhvein in a flask but most people seemed to be drinking champagne.

How great are these fireworks?

and these.....

 

Manuela, Dale and I stayed at Guido's place overnight and after a leisurely breakfast, we headed off on quite a long drive to a ski station just outside Altdorf.  Carmen and Reto rejoined us and we took 2 gondolas up to a way station that was way above the clouds covering the valley below.  We stopped to have a drink - the schnapps with coffee went down really well in the cold but sunny weather.

After Conny and Biat joined us we headed off on a 2 and a half hour trek to a remote little restaurant called Allp Selez.

  

Views of the valley below from the first way station (half way up)

and of the lower slopes

The moon was up even before we started the trek at 3.30 pm

 

We trekked steeply uphill but the views along the way were stunning.  We loved the way the snow was offset by these sunlit craggy rocks.

 

Manuela...and in the other photo a train of us following in Biat's wake.  Biat and I discovered that we were born on exactly the same day but I think he's a little bit fitter than me

 

We continued to trek uphill

and uphill - look at how deep the snow was.

And still uphill.  We had trekked past those buildings below.

We finally reached the mountain pass

We were deliriously happy to reach the pass...and we loved the sunset view that awaited us.

But then we had to trek steeply downhill... and downhill...and downhill.  This was technically challenging for first time snowshoers.  Find some fresh snow, lean back and walk on your heals.  But when you start to get the hang of it it seems like you are walking on clouds.  Bliss!

Finally we arrived at the restaurant.  It can only seat about 20 people. We were really really happy to be warm and fed.

Here's the fondue before we started.  We had 2 of these between 8 of us. Hmmm bread, cheese and garlic - if we had died of exhaustion we would have been in heaven.

 

And here's the fondue dish, not so very long later.

After dinner we walked about 15 minutes to another gondola way station.  We had to operate the gondolas ourselves.  Luckily the others had done this before.  The lights of Altdorf, in the valley below, were most beautiful.

The day had been exhausting but it had also been a truly glorious way to celebrate the first day of 2015.